


Distance

by potentiality_26



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 22:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11450559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potentiality_26/pseuds/potentiality_26
Summary: Strike cocked his head to one side and said, “Do you… well.”  He stopped.  Then, “I mean… I could give you a massage.”He didn’t normally hesitate so much, didn’t normally say things he hadn’t already made up his mind about.  But, of course, he didn’t normally offer to touch her either.  Sometimes they touched without thinking, when he was drunk or she was rattled or they were half carrying each other away from some violent scene. But he had always kept a deliberate distance from her, and she had always allowed it.One step closer.





	Distance

**Author's Note:**

> For the tumblr prompt: “Do you…well…I mean…I could give you a massage?”
> 
> Not Brit-picked. First fic for this fandom as well.

Robin nearly face-planted when a noise woke her from a doze, her chin slipping from her hand and nearly knocking against her desk. 

At his own desk in the next room, Strike shifted and the noise happened again- a creak from his chair.  Awake now, Robin rubbed a hand over her face and neck. The arm she had been resting on ached, and her shoulders were beyond stiff.  It was late, but Strike was working and Robin felt she ought to be too. There were a few notes she still wanted to get down.

He had given her a case of her own to work.  It was nothing special, just a divorce, but it was _hers_.  Strike had watched her a little… oddly at first, and she had wondered if she was missing something.  If some bizarre twist or nasty truth might reveal itself.  Eventually a nasty truth had, though not of the kind she anticipated.  It made her think of Matthew, that was all. They had never married; there had been no divorce, let alone of the messy variety that required private detectives, but there had been… something. 

The altar wasn’t the best place to realize that one’s relationship wasn’t going to last, but it was what happened.  She had thought, after she nearly broke things off with him and then changed her mind, that they had passed a kind of test.  But, standing on the altar- looking from Strike’s apologetic expression to Matthew’s thunderous one- Robin had formed another theory.  That it had been a death knell.  One of the loudest and the longest, but neither the first nor the last. 

She and Matthew could mask their resentments, make their excuses, promise to change, but at the end of the day they would still be two people together for the wrong reasons.  At the end of the day they could still tear each other apart.   

In the aftermath, Robin understood why Strike had needed a clean break from Charlotte.  She didn’t manage that; it was a slow and painful parting of ways instead.  She thought that- for all there had been between him and Charlotte- there must have been places in Strike that he either hadn’t let her touch or that she had chosen not to colonize.  Such places in Robin were few and far between; they consisted mainly of her job. Of Strike.

This made Matthew’s attempts to separate them look so much worse in hindsight.

She had seen it even before Strike arrived, even before she had reason to believe he might come for her.  She remembered fiddling with her phone in her silly white dress, and seeing the deleted history. It didn’t take a detective to guess who had done it; it wasn’t a large leap to why.  Through the entire ceremony she turned the question over in her mind: _will I say it?_   _Will I say ‘I do’ after he-_

Maybe that was why she blurted it out like she did, in such an inopportune way. Matthew brought the ceremony to a halt, and later he admitted to deleting a message from Strike. He said he just wanted her to be safe, but the straw had already broken the camel’s back.  Of course, if you asked Matthew, the straw was the way she had looked at Strike, but Robin didn’t ask Matthew.  She knew how it had looked.  She might have left the chapel with Matthew that day, but she went back to London with Strike.  She knew what her friends and family thought.

She wasn’t sure they were wrong, was the thing.  

Robin was roused from these thoughts by another noise- this the swish-and-thump of Strike coming to a stop in the doorway.  “You should go home, Robin.”

“I still have a few things to-”

“ _Robin_.”  

He had caught her with her hand on her neck, kneading the stiffness there and around her shoulders.  He could certainly tell how tired she was, and yet…  The truth was, she didn’t want to go home.  She liked the little flat she had found after the wedding-that-wasn’t, but she didn’t always know what to do with herself there.

She didn’t intend to tell him that, though. She straightened up and squared her shoulders, but she couldn’t entirely hide her wince.

Strike cocked his head to one side and said, “Do you… well.”  He stopped.  Then, “I mean… I could give you a massage.”

He didn’t normally hesitate so much, didn’t normally say things he hadn’t already made up his mind about.  But, of course, he didn’t normally offer to touch her either.  Sometimes they touched without thinking, when he was drunk or she was rattled or they were half carrying each other away from some violent scene. But he had always kept a deliberate distance from her, and she had always allowed it.  After she left Matthew, and after Strike and Elin parted ways with apparent amicability, that distance had attained a fragile quality. She wasn’t sure she was ready, yet, to shatter it.  She wasn’t sure she would ever be.  

But if a massage was all it took, perhaps it deserved to be broken.  Perhaps, in keeping him so at arms’ length, she had been doing what she almost did with Matthew.  Trading something that felt right for something that felt… simpler.  

Robin nodded finally.  “All right.”  She hardly recognized her own voice. “Thanks.”

He looked surprised by her answer, but once she had given it he didn’t hesitate anymore.  She sat forward a little and moved her hair.  He settled behind her, putting his hands on her shoulders.

Strike’s size had always been one of the things she listed among his faults to soothe Matthew.  And that she had had to, that she had felt the need to go on about how ugly he was, even when it was the last thing she thought, was something else that made her gut twist uncomfortably in hindsight.  

And Strike’s big hands on her did feel so nice, squeezing her shoulders and applying just-right pressure to her neck.  It was actually work not to moan.  

“You’re good at that,” she said instead.  

It wasn’t a question, but he answered all the same, “Charlotte used to like it.”

Robin felt herself set off balance by this information.  He told her so little about his past, for reasons that were usually evident as soon as he did.  “I thought she’d be the type to see a professional.”  Charlotte struck her as a ‘regular visits to the spa’ sort of woman.

“Oh, she did,” Strike said.  He sounded… almost amused, like some of the sting of her was gone for him.  “This was more…”

Foreplay, probably.  When his thumb slid down her spine, Robin definitely felt a… twinge.  She didn’t blame him for trailing off, or for backing away only a moment later.  Robin briefly fantasized that he would kiss her then, that he would tell her that he had made a better peace with Charlotte’s ghost because of her. Robin chastised herself for it a moment later- but not because she thought it so far off the mark, but because there was also time between him and Charlotte- time that was not yet between her and Matthew.  It was another reason to leave that distance between them, for now.  Closing it was surely worth taking slowly, worth waiting around for.

“Go home,” Strike said again.  And there was certainly a warmth, and a promise for the future, in the way he added, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She didn’t protest that time- and she smiled as she reached for her bag.  “Yeah. I’ll see you.”  

**Author's Note:**

> Come see me on [tumblr](http://potentiality-26.tumblr.com/).


End file.
